Illinois re-map process a ‘brutal’ game of chairs

By Russ Stewart

It could very well be called the “Art of the Screw.”

It’s a once-in-decade legislative opportunity by each state’s majority party – in this case the Illinois Democrats – to marginalize and make inconsequential the minority party by redrawing congressional and legislative district lines.

The technique is called packing, which means stuffing as many Republicans as possible into as few districts as possible. Mike Madigan was a master of this, doing so after the 2000 and 2010 census. He combined line-drawing with fund-raising and built 41-18 Senate, 73-45 House and 13-5 congressional Democratic majorities over the past decade

Madigan is gone now, but the current crowd of post-Madigan Springfield Democrats, led by speaker Chris Welch and Senate president Don Harmon, believe they can seamlessly replicate Madigan’s feat.

They are wrong.

They expect to enact a state legislative and congressional remap before their May 31 adjournment, but there are no more Republicans to be screwed (except in the U.S. House map).

In the state House map it looks like the Democrats may get swindled.

“It’s brutal,” said state Senator Robert Martwick (D-10) of the jousting and self-preserving maneuvering of the eight House Democrats who received less than 55 percent in 2020, and the four who got 55-59 percent. All of them want more Democratic precincts – but from where?

There were 11 House Republicans who got under 55 percent in 2020, but they look safe in 2022, for three reasons:

First, they have a 50 percent-plus Republican base as demonstrated in 2018 and 2020. Second, if Democrats extract some of the Democratic base from those districts to insert elsewhere to replace Republicans, then those Republicans have to be packed somewhere else.